In "Journeyman: Haiku, a Contemporary Worker", the Egyptian writer and journalist Mohamed Farag (1981) does not seek a specific literary form. Nevertheless, the title includes a gender specific poetic name "Haiku" (flash poetry influenced by Japanese culture), so that the title of this short and open prose appears to be a mystery. And perhaps an invitation to use haiku as a way to think about writing it.
Usually, time in haiku poetry is present, because it is a text that takes place in the moment, neither before nor after it, so this direct momentary relationship is an essential part of the value of the writing itself, especially since it is momentary that does not make the writer of the haiku excited, but rather a quiet future of what is meant by the moment at the time of its occurrence, and thus The seer / poet may record crowded and noisy scenes just as he does quiet and desolate scenes.
Philosophical pains
This is how Farag text was issued recently by the Dar al-Mahrousa in Cairo, and it must be so, where the author records the absolute and painstaking continuity of the daily life of the working human being that makes time flow in every direction and lose his sin and the present life appears with him eternally and will not end until the end of his life itself.
From here, we find the worker - (he is called "the worker" throughout the text and we do not know him by another name) - informing us of his colleague's fall and death from the window with the same calm in which he writes to the director reassuring him about the progress of work, and with the same philosophical calm in which he talks about the pain of his body, and thinks about His family, and he tells his dream, and contemplates the moment of his death.
"Daily", another word from the title in which any reader can find something of himself, although it is a term associated with daily workers who work in construction, agriculture and all temporary work that requires muscular effort, but the Egyptian writer Farag draws our attention to the fact that it is also a description that applies today. The children of the petty bourgeoisie, those educated and educated people who work on temporary contracts or "freelancers" or "part-time" or for a certain number of days ... etc., to show that these are all more elegant descriptions of the adjective "day laborer".
"Journeyman ... Haiku is a contemporary worker" written in simple poetic language and includes one-page stories (Al-Jazeera)
The text reflects indirectly on what happens to the worker himself when the "temporary" and daily becomes the basis for the relationship with the profession, so the work process itself is not affected by the change in the nature of this association.
"My boss, don't worry, here we are ... standing on the edge of the day ... we here know exactly what we will do in working hours. We will play magic games in order to make a long bridge that quickly takes us over the disaster that you want to present to us," he says.
Contemporary journeyman
The contemporary day-to-day idea contemplated by Faraj, the owner of the story group, carries long-term plans (Al-Ain / 2019), in its essence, the end of the psychological and emotional value of work, and the disengagement between the productive worker and what he produces. What remains of any profession is routine and automatic production, not satisfaction with The self, its realization, impulsivity, or sincerity, but the absolute surrender to the mechanization of man. Others remind you that what needs to be done must be done.
The text starts from the first moment of a day in which millions of people know it, an individual gets up from his bed in the morning and prepares to leave his home for work, then we see him move in the following shots in the form of a person who has taken something from him but does not try to recover it, until his awakening took place against his will, as if it was done by Remote control "," with threads invisible, but very strong and soft, one withdraws from his bed to the workplace, the strings allow him to wash his face. "
The story of the daily misery
The text ends with the death of the worker, so we are in front of a classic line of the story of the daily misery of man from birth to death, but birth in the text is in our hands embodied in getting out in the morning from bed, where a person is born every day from sleep exhausted and defeated in front of the day, emerging again and again from this artificial womb To begin to work hard in order to live and earn, then to sleep and start the ball again, the whole texture and language of the book is based on the writer’s response to the meaning of familiarity with pain, and the author’s deep awareness over time of the deeper, existential, everyday meanings.
Faraj collects all this heavy time in a lemon hanging on a tree that a co-worker looks at from the window and wishes to pick it. After a few days the lemon falls and watches it rotting and announces the end of a desire hanging with this insignificance. ”In the following days, the colleague could not stop watching the lemon as it rot quietly".
"Daily-traveler ... Haiku, a contemporary worker" is not limited to the written text only, but the writer also included 7 photographs that he took himself, which refers to the relationship of the text with the pictures published with him. The latter often appears in any hybrid work that is secondary to the text or it is here To serve words, that is, we are in a certain sense in front of the concepts of the body (writing) and the margin (the picture).
These two themes are clear in the construction of the written text as well. The worker lives his daily existence as if he is a burden on him, or if he falls on the margins of his life itself.
The writer corresponds to the margin as a place where the worker moves, the photographer looking forward to a more compassionate margin than the subject of writing itself, and this is what most of the images make to a degree, as they were taken outside work, at home, away from the screen, the office, rooms, and questions, making them closer to moments of intermittent and hesitant escape as well .. Doesn't the worker want for a moment, for example, the relaxing life of loose dogs in a public place?
Haiku poetry emerged from the core of Japanese-Arab cultural communication at the beginning of the last century (communication sites)
Everyday things
The writer took the first picture from below, in which the ghost of a human being walking erased under the influence of the building that appears above it and not behind it, the sky on one side and the geometrical shape of the building on the other and the street lighting on the pedestrian, 3 elements that dominate the walking person and move him away from the center, some branches obscure part of the The horizon and the intersection of this domination and loneliness, and this role assigned to trees is repeated in the following pictures, as we find in the text, "The problem of man with his bones began when he stopped climbing trees."
Nevertheless, it appears that the photographer is experimenting with the ability of photography to kill things that appear alive through the light or what surrounds him, so nature appears in all black and white images, dusty and bleak, as if it reflects the loneliness of the beholder, despite its attempts to reduce the burden of the world.
Some pictures are close to everyday things, there are two small coffee cups with two long shades, underneath which are table wood that reminds us of trees again, these that the writer still presents to us as if they save everything from the absence of beauty, and yet it does not appear that man receives this beauty without taking it away from it. Something, in the last image a bowl of aloe vera alone in clear focus and abstract background, we are drawn as gaze at the quiet and closed space of this creature, it seems that it feels the affinity compared to the presence of man in the outside world.
Work and the worker's body
This last image can be an image of the transformation from body to patience, as Faraj depicts the work relationship with the worker's body as if it were a torture party in which the latter is subjected to variations of pain "on the seat with bound and bent shoulders forward, the shape of the bones of the body will change, the vertebrae are compressed, inflamed Nerves get blocked, foci of pain are formed that will not leave him later. "
The worker's body is present on almost every page of the book, missing the representation of the owner who thinks about turning it into something useful for the employer, perhaps taking advantage of the energy of boredom, boredom and anger to generate electricity, or his camber can become a garden, for example, and soon we realize that this hump is a work injury It is not recognized, and that it humped us all, the tattoos with which we, modern workers, behind the screens, we know each other as one group.
The worker identifies with many contemporary workers, without preventing him from disgust and indifference, which he expresses: “One of them was smoking while leaning on the balcony fence, did not pay attention to the part on which he leaned (...) Suddenly the wall broke and our colleague fell, we heard the sound of his body hitting the ground (..) ), We heard the shout of the leader of the shift looting us for the necessity to return and complete the work, so we went in ... and some of us threw their cigarettes (...) to fall next to the fellow's body. "
Faraj builds his book so that every page is a block in its own right, each page includes a different situation that flows into the river of fatigue, sometimes a view activates the mechanics of communicating with the world again, outside of work life, that world that is losing it ceaselessly in the life of a prisoner that revolves between the seat and the bed .
Sometimes, for example, a worker loves his balcony, sunlight, a riverbank, a bench in a park .. But the small size of the book and its intense and short style do not prevent us from feeling that we want to read more, especially when the writer goes through a moment, he finds himself in a demonstration. The huge inside of it ", but it ends before he even tries to scream like the others in it. Perhaps the writer quickly passed this moment of protest just as quickly as it ended, the glow of the screaming disappeared, and all that remains is the effect of ordinary misery.